Michael Cera does an impeccable Marge Simpson impression midway through Dustin Guy Defa’s “The Adults” in a scene in which his character, a vengeful poker player named Eric, doesn’t want to say what he’s really feeling. It’s a defense mechanism Eric shares with his siblings, the similarly aged Rachel (Hannah Gross) and the younger Maggie (Sophia Lillis). They can all do different cartoonish voices. The siblings also sing original songs and dance, with some scenes of their stressful but low-key reunion within “The Adults” suddenly breaking into reams of lyrics and coordinated hand jives, remnants of a creative bond these siblings once shared. Now it’s a way in which they don’t actually talk to each other. 

“The Adults” has many scenes with strange voices and random song-and-dance numbers, and each time it’s a brilliant, animated interpretation of how family bonds can seep into superficiality. Trying to make people laugh instead of letting them see the authentic you; going through the motions, no cues needed. “The Adults” is perceptive and funny about this throughout in a way that is anti-razzmatazz just as much as it is anti-twee. Writer/director Defa and his three excellent performances present this “quirky” family trait without a trace of irony. 

The movie’s premise is overly, perhaps knowingly familiar–Eric returns home for the first time in years and faces the people and pain he left behind. Rachel is not amused, feeling the burn of Eric’s disappearance and detachment. He doesn’t consider all that Rachel has shared in brief communications about her past woes (about her ex, about their mom dying, about her inheriting the family house); he doesn’t fully grasp how funereal she has become, adorned in different shades of black and with her clothes always covering her neck. But he does criticize her for not being as fun as she used to be. Gross captures how exhausting it can be in Rachel’s shoes, illustrating her resulting defensive nature with a tragic coldness. 

Eric makes the visit home all the more teeth-gnashing for Rachel by saying it will be short. Eric even lies about what else will be keeping him busy on the trip and insists on staying at a hotel despite his two sisters living nearby. He has such low bandwidth for his family that he pretends to take a call during a bowling trip and goes to the claw machine instead. 

Rachel is worried about what Eric’s reemergence will do to Maggie, who is extremely excited to see her older brother, and unaware that he’s mostly in town to win poker games, extending his stay each night to maintain a hot streak. But Maggie lacks Rachel’s cynicism, at least for now, and is closer to the golden days of the siblings before loss and distance broke up their band. She got the memo to speak in monotone during this uncertain reunion, and yet Maggie is the first person to break into song as they sit in the backyard of the family home, with Eric eventually joining her. She is the source of the movie’s tightest hugs. Lillis’ performance, her giddiness cracking through the solemnity that comes with such dysfunction, is full of worrisome vulnerability and warming energy. 

“The Adults” is a triage of dynamic characters, and its version of a “villain” helps the story become all that more distinct. Michael Cera has been absent from lead movie roles for a couple of years, but in the role of Eric, he returns with an intriguing intensity and is well in control of his sometimes novel presence (as in “Barbie”). There’s a striking, alarming uncertainty to the scowl he reveals when the sister hang-out isn’t working for him or when he’s doing that Marge Simpson accent. At night, when playing poker, he further reveals Eric’s smug need for admiration but layers it with increasing uncertainty about his true story. It turns out that Cera’s cameo in Aaron Sorkin’s poker story “Molly’s Game” (as “Player X”) was no fluke; he really does have the chops for mind games and limited tells. It’s one of his best performances yet, and it’s fitting for a movie that encourages you to read all faces closely.

Defa’s film aligns with the notion that it’s how a story is told–how it feels–and not just what it is about. And there is so much to feel from his take on dysfunction, including how it presents siblings who can sing and dance in unison but are not friends. “The Adults” is defined by such crucial touches: even the incredible, jazzy score by Alex Weston is careful with its flute and piano as if trying to tiptoe around the story’s awkwardness. Wide shots from Tim Curtin’s cinematography of Rachel and Eric standing across from each other, both marooned in the same frame, couldn’t be more painful. Watching Eric join his sisters in a dance routine later on couldn’t be more hopeful, however bittersweet.  

Now playing in theaters. 

“Bad Things,” writer/director Stewart Thorndike’s sophomore feature, is a queer reinterpretation of Stanley Kubrick’s classic “The Shining.” Ruthie (Gayle Rankin) is the inheritor of the Comely Suites, a suburban, snowy hotel passed down by her mother. Ruthie’s relationship with her mother is fraught, and her connection to the hotel is equally traumatic. 

When she brings her girlfriend Cal (Hari Nef) and coupled friends Maddie (Rad Pereira) and Fran (Annabelle Dexter-Jones) for a weekend getaway, the influence of the hotel, and their isolation within it, becomes oppressive. Bad things happen in the Comely Suites, and between Ruthie’s teetering disposition, Fran’s neuroticism, and underlying seeds of doubt, envy, and anger between the group, the friends find themselves at the mercy of various volatile influences.

Thorndike’s film wears its inspiration on its sleeve, from the snowed-in hotel linked to a seemingly inevitable descent into madness to a scene across the hotel bar. And “Bad Things” is something of reinvention, with male patriarchal madness turned to traumatic female rage and family units spun into the intersection of relationships and friendship. But Thorndike’s high-magnitude, cherished concept just never fulfills its potential

Where the central four characters’ friendship and intersecting romantic relationships are meant to be the film’s grounding center, there’s nothing but flimsy connections and dead air. There’s no chemistry between the characters and no genuine feeling in their performances. Their friendship is far from believable, and, as the core of the film’s tension, this failure leaves “Bad Things” lacking emotional investment in its stakes.

Ruthie’s relationship with her mother plays out over unanswered texts and vague mentions, and a history of infidelity tarnishes her relationship with Cal. But every scattered seed of personal history isn’t given the support from the script that allows them to grow into worthwhile inclusions. Ruthie is aloof and angry, and that’s pretty much it. With a script that begs us to give in to her plight, her character is simply too flat to inspire any interest. The trauma plot, which feeds the film’s subtext, is a bit cherry-picked. It comes across as an addition to give the film a semblance of deeper meaning rather than a truly thoughtful exploration of pain’s resilient ties to time and place. 

The look of “Bad Things” is its strongest element. Its cinematography is cold and clinical, harshly objective compared to the hotel’s sometimes surrealist resonance and elusive layout. The entirety of the space is explored, from the pool to cluttered ballrooms and stark placeless rooms. It effectively becomes a character responsible for the eerie, unsettling tone. 

“Bad Things” juggles too many elements with too little focus. It plays out like a waiting game, with a pace that stumbles through its 84-minute runtime with plenty of hollow conversations and a few teases of tension. The relationships meant to hold the film together are floss-bound and flimsy, and the peeks into character histories are thrown away as quickly as they’re mentioned. “Bad Things” is thoughtful as a concept—a ruminant queer and female-forward reinvention of a familiar tale. But by the time any emotional upheaval and bloodshed have paid off, the film has already fatigued itself and its audience.

Now playing on Shudder.  

Some of you may remember the novel and subsequent film I Don’t Know How She Does It, the title of which was a common expression of wonderment attached to its protagonist, a woman juggling motherhood and career. After a dire, unsettling prologue—one that appears, for a period, to have nothing to do with what comes after—“Madeleine Collins” (a title that, like the aforementioned prologue, only makes sense late in the movie) shows us how one woman juggles a career and two different households in which she’s a mother.

There’s Geneva, where “Margot” is the hard-pressed partner of Abdel and mom to adorable clingy toddler Ninon; she works in the city as a translator. Then there’s Paris, where “Judith” is the adored and sharp-dressing wife of Melvil, a celebrated orchestra conductor. There she looks after two sons; one of them, Joris, is getting old enough to suspect that his mom is not entirely what she seems.

Margot and Judith are the same woman, played with an intense emphasis on the stress that’s building in her untenable situation by Virginie Efira, best known to viewers here for her work in Paul Verhoeven’s “Elle” and “Benedetta.” In Antoine Berraud’s film, which he wrote in collaboration with Hélène Klotz, she begins on a note of everyday beleaguered confidence and/or faith that’s not uncommon in a woman’s world. The more we learn about her situation, the more curious it becomes. Abdel is aware of her other life in Paris. And Melvil knows who Abdel is. More than the audience does at first, actually. But Melvil is not privy to the life his wife shares with the other man. It turns out that Judith/Margot’s parents have ties to both domestic situations but no idea of the whole picture.

As snags and coincidental meetings mount up—here’s a former co-worker from years back encountering her under a different name in Geneva! Here’s the scruffy underworld ID forger who has a crush on her and so deliberately gave her a card that expired way before five years were up!—and Judith comes more and more under the snooty eye of Parisian teen son Joris (played with note-perfect petulance by Thomas Gioria), this character, whose true name is never, it seems, really known to the viewer, starts to come apart.

Berraud’s juggling a few themes here—that of the varied roles we’re compelled to take on in life, here pushed to hard limits, and that of the difficulty of being a woman, a popular topic these days. Between the prologue and how the movie’s narrative grows more frantic—not to mention the use of Romain Trouillet’s music that owes a lot to Hitchcock-era Bernard Herrmann—Berraud wants to push this material into the realm of something like a suspense thriller. It doesn’t quite work, especially given the reveal of what drove Efira’s character to her deceits, which, while meant to be heartstring-pulling, plays as rather more banal than one might have expected.  

But the settings are better than credible, as is the acting across the board. Quim Gutierrez is sympathetic and surly as Abdel, who eventually grows so exasperated with his arrangement that he brings another woman into the household. Bruno Salomone, as Melvil, projects a relatively benign self-involvement that makes his inability to see what’s going on almost a given. Jacqueline Bisset is welcome in a supporting role as Margot/Judith’s mother. But the movie is most naturally a showcase for Efira, whose work as an unusual 17^th-century nun in “Benedetta” demonstrated she could play dazzling and tormented with equal facility and who gets to work a similar range here.  

Now playing in theaters. 

It’s 2036 AD, and space aliens have not only landed on Earth, but also maybe forever changed the economy, too. That’s the main premise of “Landscape with Invisible Hand,” a satirical sci-fi comedy based on M.T. Anderson’s award-winning young adult sci-fi novel. Adapted and directed by Cory Finley (“Thoroughbreds,” “Bad Education”), “Landscape with Invisible Hand” expands the plot and core relationships of Anderson’s novel, which follows an aspiring teen painter and his family as they struggle to make enough money to keep their family home.

Some of Finley’s tweaks and twists stand out, especially how some characters wallow and even weaponize their financial distress as a self-soothing coping strategy. Unfortunately, “Landscape with Invisible Hand” still relies too much on basic and by-now trite ideas about making money and staying human under otherwise degrading living conditions. Finley’s E.T.s are clearly meant to reveal how small and/or resilient humanity can be when faced with even fewer ways to survive, but they ultimately seem more like a fanciful plot device than a thoughtful extension of the world outside the movie theater.

The setup’s good enough: the Vuvv have been observing our planet since the 1950s but have kept their distance out of fear of being shunned like any other outsiders. Now they’re here and have already been welcomed by rapacious businessmen and their newly jobless subordinates. The Vuvv, whom one character describes as “gooey” sentient coffee tables, have advanced technology but lack empathy. Soon everyone on Earth works for them, either as hired help or entertainment. The Vuvv like retrograde 1950s sitcoms because they like the idea of people more than the reality. Go figure.

Adam Campbell (Asante Blackk), a teenage artist, mostly keeps to himself but still becomes involved with the Vuvv after he invites fellow high-schooler Chloe Marsh (Kylie Rogers) to stay in his family’s basement. At first, Adam’s mom Beth (Tiffany Haddish), resists this new living situation, but she tentatively warms up to Chloe’s apologetic dad (Josh Hamilton) and surly older son Hunter (Michael Gandolfini) once Mr. Marsh starts paying rent. Chloe also chips in, but she does it by recording a live “courtship broadcast” video stream with Adam, which they tape and upload for the Vuvv using data-recording monitors called nodes. The Vuvv pay to watch Adam and Chloe hold hands and neck with each other, which understandably estranges the young lovers. Then the Vuvv sue Chloe and Adam for false advertising, since their livestream is called “Adam and Chloe in Love,” so they have to figure out an alternative living/money-making arrangement.

Much of “Landscape with Invisible Hand” sets up ideas that are either negligibly developed or carefully avoided. The Marshes’ resentment towards the Campbells provides the greatest source of tension since Mr. Marsh resents Mrs. Campbell for having opportunities he and his son crave. Hunter’s pouting is sometimes amusing, though a later scene where he shaves off his eyebrows to make himself look more appealing to the Vuvv doesn’t go far enough. It’s also disappointing to see not much made of an early scene where Chloe shoos away a broke classmate (Christian Adam) by telling him that he’s scaring away her other customers. His sullen retort—“What other customers?”—is funnier and more to the point than anything else in “Landscape with Invisible Hand.”

The Campbell family, including Adam’s sister Natalie (Brooklynn MacKinzie), also don’t have much of an emotional life beyond their discomfort with the Vuvv. That’s partly by design, though the movie’s brisk pace and bracing close-ups suggest that Finley’s too invested in keeping viewers at arm’s length. There’s even a pseudo-Spielbergian scene involving Adam’s dad that explains why there’s no love left in the Campbell home. That’s a provocative concept, but it’s not developed beyond a point. Instead, Haddish gets a tidy little speech in which she tells off one of the Vuvv, and then the movie shifts focus yet again so that it’s about Adam, the frustrated painter. That plot thread predictably does not end well for Adam, though he still gets to walk away without much dramatic fallout or urgency.

You can see much of what’s wanting in “Landscape with Invisible Hand” in the scenes that revolve around the Vuvv. They’re weird-looking and quirky, but they don’t do or suggest much beyond what we already know. The rich don’t need to like or even care about you, not as long as they can pay you. That’s about as meaningful as “Landscape with Invisible Hand” gets, which is unfortunate given how much time is spent on endlessly restating the skewed terms and conditions of Adam’s perpetually complicated life story. Finley deserves credit for adding extra wrinkles to Anderson’s story, but “Landscape with Invisible Hand” doesn’t cut deep enough to leave a mark.

Now playing in theaters. 

Sayre’s law says, “In any dispute, the intensity of feeling is inversely proportional to the value of the issues at stake.” In “The Owners,” a film from the Czech Republic that takes place almost entirely at a meeting of a building’s co-op members, the intensity of feeling is always high, whether the topic at hand is as minor as if there needs to be a vote about who will take the notes or as literally fundamental as approval of critical maintenance of the building’s roof and pipes. Inside the co-op’s meeting room are scuffles, bigoted accusations, tears, and people who walk out in disgust or fury, all in a tone of the darkest satire, based on a play by the film’s writer/director, Jirí Havelka. 

Over the opening credits, we see a family hurrying to get ready. In contrast to the chaos in their apartment, the soundtrack features an elegant classical piece by Czech composer Jan Dismas Zelenka. Its title translates as “Under the Olive Tree of Peace and the Palm Tree of Virtue the Crown of Bohemia Splendidly Shines Before the Whole World: Melodrama.” That’s the only peace or virtue we’ll be getting in this film.

The chair of the meeting is Mrs. Zahrádková (Tereza Ramba), who is very organized and very determined, wearing a brightly colored sweater and little plastic barrettes in her hair that emphasize her youth compared to most of the other members of the homeowners’ association. She wants her husband, Mr. Zahrádka (Vojtech Kotek), to keep the minutes, but Mrs. Roubíčková (Klára Melíšková), acting as a combination parliamentarian/cop, insists on a vote to approve, even voting on whether there should be voting, with several layers of approval and verification for everything. Mrs. Zahrádková starts to lose patience because she is eager to get to her ambitious agenda. But the other attendees have other views if some seem unclear on the basic concepts. 

Mr. Švec (David Novotný) is the son of one of the owners, but his mother is in the hospital, so he is there to cast her votes. Mrs. Roubíčková insists on seeing his power of attorney. He passes her the paper. She notes that the only signature on it is his; what it needs is his mother’s authorization. He obligingly takes it back, scribbles on the paper, and hands it back. “Even if I closed my eyes and did not see you signing it for your mother,” she sniffs, “you cannot sign it ‘Mom.’” 

The snobbish Mrs. Procházková (Pavla Tomicová) is accompanied by her “representative,” Mr. Novák (Ondřej Malý). She does not live in her apartment; she rents it to six Ghanaian medical students. Mr. Nitranský (Andrej Polák) does not let the homophobic slurs from some of his neighbors interfere with his commitment to making urgently needed repairs to the building’s common areas. Mr. Kubát (Jiří Lábus) longs for the good old days of communism. Another attendee says nothing and just reads his book. And there are two sets of newcomers, a newlywed couple who are mostly silent and the affable Čermáks, fraternal twins (Kryštof Hádek, Stanislav Majer), who have just inherited the apartment from their father. 

As the conflicts move from the annoying to the existential, the one-room setting is appropriately depressing and claustrophobia-inducing. Anyone who has ever suffered through efforts to try to achieve consensus might want to consider this a trigger warning. Some of the film’s satire relies too heavily on repetition, with Mr. Kubát insisting that everything used to be better under the Soviets and Mr. Novák responding to every issue by handing out his business card, explaining that whatever the problem is, from plumbing to pets, he has a “small company” that can fix it. The cutaways that show the reality of the situations being debated are superfluous. 

But as the frustration of the group gets more intense and the issues get more controversial (and, unsurprisingly, expensive), it becomes clear that the film is making a larger point about the inability of governments, citizens, and human beings to overcome what Garrett Hardin called The Tragedy of the Commons: How do we find a way to do what is best for the group in the long term instead of what is best in the short term for us as individuals?  How do we care as much about the land, water, and air we all share as about our own homes? How do we act in time to prevent the collapse of our literal foundations? All we can do is hope we find a better way than this group.

Now playing in select theaters.